Beech Road in the summer of 1932

We are on Beech Road in the summer of 1932.  

Judging by the shadows and the activity it must be sometime in the

morning.

The manager of John Williams and Sons looks on as his assistant sweeps the pavement in front of the shop and beyond him other shop keepers are laying out their produce.

As yet there are few people about and most of those are on bikes are more than likely out on their first delivery rounds.

Most seem oblivious to the camera, except that is for the two by the lampspost who have stopped their conversation to gaze back at the photographer.

The picture perfectly captures Beech Road in the early years of the 1930s.  The stone setts on Wilton Road have yet to be covered and the old railings around the Rec are still in place, otherwise it is not so different from today.

Of course the absence of cars is quite striking as are the shop fronts with their tall windows,  and painted signs.

What is all the more remarkable is that it is a scene which is more familiar to us than to those who walked the road before 1930.

I had always assumed that the row of shops which included John Williams & Sons had been built sometime soon after the beginning of the 20th century.

The site had originally been occupied by Sutton’s Cottage which was a wattle and daub dwelling and may well have been built in the early 1800s and was demolished in 1891.*

So it was reasonable enough to assume that the plot was built over soon afterwards but not so.

The other surprise was that John Williams and Sons were not local traders but in fact owned a chain of grocer shops across the city and beyond which in 1931 accounted for 41 shops of which there were three in Chorlton**, six in Didsbury and

another four in Rusholme.

Now I rather think there is a story here.  Back in 1895 they are listed as John & Sons with five shops in Didsbury abd Fallowfield which by 1911 had become 11 with John Williams described as managing director and the head office at 400 Dickinson Road.

Later still although I can’t date it is a wonderful advert for the company which advertises their ‘“Dainty, Delightful Delicious Tea, [from] John Williams & Sons limited, “The Suburban Grocers”, [at] 28 Victoria Street Manchester Stockport & Branches’.

And looking at the interior of one of their shops sometime in the early 20th century there is more than an element of “class” about the place.

So while the shelves groan with tinned produce and between the potted plants are the familiar posters advertising Californian Apricots at 6½d, and Coffee and other things, it is less cluttered, less in your face and far more discreet.

All of which makes me wonder at what our own shop on Beech Road would have been like, but that like the full story of John Williams and Sons will just have to wait.

Location; Beech Road, Chorlton


Picture; from the Lloyd Collection, 1932

*Sarah Sutton http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/sarah-sutton-life-lived-out-on-row.html

**32 Beech Road, Wilbraham Road, 211 Upper Chorlton Road.

Megalosaurus … the dinosaur with a story … today on the wireless

Who doesn’t like dinosaurs?

Or perhaps less like and more fascinated.

All of which is a lead into this week’s In Our Time on BBC Radio 4 which is all about Megalosaurus which the accompanying notes to the programme tells me was “The first dinosaur to ever be scientifically named, almost 20 years before we even had the word ‘dinosaur’. 

In 1824, the geologist and priest William Buckland (1784-1856) stood before the Geological Society of London and announced something that would kickstart two centuries of dinosaur science. 

He’d been studying large, fossilised bones which didn’t resemble those of any living animal - and, as he told his rapt audience at that meeting, he had a new name for this mysterious and unusual creature: Megalosaurus. 

Misha Glenny and his guests discuss why the 19th century was such profound period of theological and scientific change, and how our understanding of mid Jurassic dinosaurs has changed since. 

This In Our Time episode examines the story of a dinosaur that led to palaeontology as we know it today. 

The discussion explores the influential roles of William and Mary Buckland, how we learn about animals from over 160 million years ago, and why you’d never have seen a Megalosaurus and a Tyrannosaurus Rex together.

With Emily Rayfield, Professor of Palaeobiology at the University of Bristol, Emma Nicholls, Vertebrate Palaeontologist and Collections Manager at Oxford University Museum of Natural History and Steve Brusatte, Professor of Palaeontology and Evolution at the University of Edinburgh

Producer: Martha Owen

In Our Time is a BBC Studios production”

Location;  In Our Time, BBC Radio 4

Pictures; In Our Time logo, courtesy of  the BBC and Doris the Dinosaur, 2020, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*Megalosaurus: the first dinosaur to ever be scientifically named, In Our Time, BBC Radio 4, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0032fqb

Travels with a box of toffees to the Tower of London and beyond

The quality of the images is a bit iffy, but they perfectly recreate the London I knew when I was growing up.

London Bridge , 1956

They come from the book, London by Cyril Bunt which was published in 1956 in a series called Journeys Through Our Early History.

Mr. Bunt wrote a lot of books in the 1950s and most were aimed at children as is this one, which recreated the city as it might have been in Saxon time.

And here I have to admit that of all the periods of the past, the Saxons and Vikings rank pretty low on my step ladder of interesting periods in history.

Still, Mr. Blunt did  a good job of making Saxon London believable, and in the process filled the book with a series of interesting illustrations of London life in the Dark Ages.

But what really drew me in, were the pictures of the city in 1956.

True, they may have dated from a few years earlier, but they were close enough to set my memory running.

Cranes, and boats and cars, 1956

It starts with the skyline which is not dominated by tall commercial blocks reaching to the clouds, but by nothing taller than a church spire.

While the river is still a busy working place with cranes, warehouses, and ocean-going ships.

During the 1950s I regularly walked over London Bridge, usually on a Saturday as the start of an adventure which often ended at the Tower of London, but which would also take in  the fish market and the equally smelly little streets around the Monument.

Never underestimate the excitement of setting off armed with just your pocket money of 2/6d, and knowing after you had paid the price of the return to London Bridge, the rest was yours too spend on whatever came your way.

This involved a packet of Poppets*, which were always bought at the same slot machine just outside London Bridge Railway Station.

Now when you are ten, there are plenty of adventures you want to share with your friends, but the Saturday morning trips were best done without the distraction of others, partly because I never quite knew where I was going to end up, but also because to share the walk got in the way of my imagination.

And there was plenty of scope for that in those twisty streets around Billingsgate.

Walbrook, 1956

Get there early enough and the workmen were still cleaning the streets of discarded fish and ice, which gave off that distinct smell.

Even more exciting was the Tower itself which was free to youngsters on a Saturday, and no matter how many times I went, each dollop of the Castle’s history was new all over again.

On a particularly hot sunny day there was the option of going down onto the beach in front of the Tower at low tide, and while there was still sand, it was strewn with the debris of the river, from lumps of wood, broken bottles and unpleasant things which had once been alive but were no longer.

The River at King's Reach, 1956

Alternatively, there was always the aimless walk around the city, which by degree might end up at St Paul’s, the Embankment or eventually Trafalgar Square.

All of which was a long way from London Bridge, but then there was always a bit of that 2/6d which could be used to buy a journey on the Underground.

Looking back, those adventures lasted but a few years, and the move to Well Hall offered up different things to do.

And when I did retrace my steps a decade or so later, so much had changed that the magic was lost.

Location; London

Pictures; London in 1956, from London, Cyril Bunt 1956 

*Poppets were  soft centered toffees, which came in a small red carton.  They came on to the market in 1937 and wee made by Payne’s in Croydon, and to my surprise  are still manufactured today.

Stories of demolition part 1 ……. Manchester 1971

Sometimes you come across a picture which is not just a record of an event, but offers up so much more.

So here we are with an unnamed building somewhere in the heart of the city going through the last stages of its demolition.

Most of the fittings have gone, and along with one whole side of the building, exposing all that is left.

Fireplaces appear suspended in midair, empty doorways lead no where and even the act of walking across a floor is no longer possible

Location; Manchester

Picture; demolition, 1971, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

Searching the picture ….. London Road 1895

This is a photograph of London Road where it joins Store Street and we are in 1895.

London Road, 1895

There is nothing very remarkable about the picture and might well be described as eight people, two posters  and one antique shop.

But there is of course more and it is the more that has drawn me in.

Above the brick pillar is the approach to London Road Railway Station and that antique shop is still there.  I remember it as a tobacconist and also as a betting shop and is now empty and boarded up.

London Road, 2019

Just whether it will ever see better days again is debatable.

It is after all on that very busy stretch of London Road which most pedestrians shun and is given over to speeding traffic and passing trams.

All of which means it’s footfall is limited.

But not so back in 1895 when an H Entwhistle captured that group of four boys and four men staring into the camera in front of Mr. William Butterworth Wharton’s shop. He described himself as a “dealer in works of art”, and I can track his presence there from 1888 to 1911.

Earlier he is listed during the late 1870s and early 1880s on Half Street by the Cathedral and was living at Oak Bank Cheetham Hill Road.  Now that begs the question of whether the move to London Road was a step up or a slide down.

He died in 1915 leaving the sum of £1150.

Sadly, so far there is little of him in the official records.  He is missing from the census returns but I know  he married in 1880, that his wife Maria died in 1912 and he had at least two sons. They along with his wife are buried in the same plot in Manchester General Cemetery.

And as they say …. Watch this spot because a Sarah Ellen Makin, a Joseph Shevlin and a Betty Mckeown share the plot.  These last three may have no family connection with the Wharton family but it will be fun to explore the chances that they were.

Our man, 1895

At which point I have to confess our dealer in art was not how I was drawn into the picture, that prize goes to one of the eight staring back at me.  He is the one with the hat and by chance his face is the one most clearly visible.

He leans against the poster stand looking back at the camera with what could be a mix of curiosity, or disdain challenging the photographer to  discover what he is thinking.  

And what ever he is thinking I am convinced that he will never offer up any details of his life or his secrets.  

By contrast the others are a blank canvas and could be any one of the thousands of passers by confronted with the new technology of photograpy.

To their right are two posters advertising an event at Bell Vue featuring the Storming of Port Arthur during the short Russo Japanese War of the year before.

The caption on the picture refers to the “crack in the abutment” which 130 years later is still there.

Leaving me just to ponder on what the man on the left has in that basket and just what the neatly dressed  boy with cap and posh looking overcoat was doing on London Road .

But I doubt we will ever know, as for what our man in the hat was thinking .... that is just utter conjecture which has no place amongst the facts other than as a piece of tosh.

Location; London Road, London Road, 1895, H Entwhistle m63006, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass and Mr. Wharton’s shop, 2019, courtesy of Google Maps

Mrs Crump of Chorlton-cum-Hardy and a piece of broadcasting history

Now this is another of those stories which has much more to offer.

Back on January 1 1947 Mrs Elsie May Crump appeared on Woman’s Hour which had first aired three months earlier in October 1946.

According to the synopsis of that day’s edition which was described as
“a daily programme of information, entertainment, and music for the woman at home “  and sandwiched between  James Laver on ' Why do men dress like that'; Ruth Drew , Jeanne Heal , and Guilfoyle Williams on ' Answering Your Household Problems'; there was” Mrs. Elsie May Crump on What I think of Woman's Hour after three months ' “

And of course the participation of Mrs Elise Crump was something that just had to be followed up.

She described herself as a working woman who worked in her husband’s butcher’s shop.

Now that shop was nu 24 Oswald Road on the corner with Nicholas and according to the directories the business is listed under her name from 1935 to 1969.

The shop is no longer a butcher’s shop but was still selling meat in 1980 under the name of Arnold's, and that of course is an invite to anyone who knows more about Mrs Crump and that shop to send in their memories and perhaps even a picture.

I do have one picture of her taken during the January programme but copyright prevents me from publishing it until I have asked the BBC so for now all I can offer up is an entry in the 1946 telephone directory.and one of Andy Robertson's pictures.who when I asked if he had a photograph of the place went out an hour ago and took this one in the rain.

Now that is a pretty good example of updating a story.

So there you have it a bit of Chorlton’s history along with a big bit of broadcasting history.

Picture; extract from telephone directory, 1946, courtesy of ancestry.co.uk, and the shop from the collection of Andy Robertson, 2014

Additional research by Andy Robertson

Outside Beech Road Police Station ........ revealing a little of the life of PC Frederick George Ross

This is Police Constable Frederick George Ross standing with his colleagues outside the police station on Beech Road.

Now I can’t be exactly sure when the picture was taken but one source has suggested 1925.*

And that would have made PC Ross forty-seven years old.

He had joined the city force in 1904 and by  1910 was living on Priory Avenue before moving to Whalley Avenue.

Of the named officers he is the one we know most about and that is as much a bit of luck as it is research.

After all if he had not been recognised and his name added to the picture we would not have been able to discover his story.

But with a name a search of the police employment records and the census returns not only located him but provided me with the name of his wife and daughter and his own place of birth.

PC Ross had married Rebecca Jane Lawson in 1909 in Bolton and their daughter Nora was born the following year.

Like all such stories the detail is even more fascinating for while Nora had been born in Bolton she was registered at the Chorlton office and baptised at St Clements in the May of 1910 which is how we know the family were living at Priory Avenue.

Almost a year later they were on Whalley Avenue and a search of the directories will reveal when they moved from that address.

But that is not quite the end of the story because in the course of doing the research I came across a relative who had posted a series of pictures, one of Frederick and Rebecca and two showing PC Ross during police inspections one of which is dated to 1921.

And according to this source Mrs Ross was in Ireland by 1925 where she died in 1949 followed by her husband fifteen years later.

In time there will be more but for now that is all but it is a lesson in how it is possible to discover a family story.

Nor is that all, because looking at the police records what is interesting is the number of officers who were born in Ireland and Scotland, a trend which goes back beyond 1904 when Chorlton voted to join the city.

Before that date we had been policed by the Lancashire Constabulary who were responsible for building the station in 1885.

Just six years later the officer in charge was a Sergeant Milne from Ireland assisted by two PCs from Scotland and a decade on with  Sergeant Milne there were officers from Ireland and Gloucestershire as well as Lancashire.

Location; Chorlton

Picture; PC Ross, 1875-1963 from Police officers outside Beech Road Police Station circa 1925 from the Lloyd Collection